


Wave of Mutilation

by moon_custafer



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, LOVECRAFT H. P. - Works, Shadow Over Innsmouth
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Genderswap, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-02-01 13:35:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12706059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moon_custafer/pseuds/moon_custafer
Summary: “Even her relatives couldn't have called the police yet. Not when she'd only left the day before. And with or without the wig, she no longer looked much like any of her old photos. No, she was safe from interference, as long as she did nothing to attract attention. But this staying out of the sunlight was going to be a nuisance.”





	1. Chapter 1

It was after Karen had stopped for lunch in Old Furnace, on the first full day of driving, that she realized her skin now sunburned in one-hundred and twenty seconds out of doors. The town was mostly a few big-box stores around a parking lot anyway, so she went into a chain pharmacy where the fluorescent lights were bright, but cool. She picked up aloe vera gel, painkillers, a scarf, and a baseball cap to shade her face. The wig she had bought a few weeks back shielded her scalp well enough, and she'd been wearing long-sleeved shirts for longer. The store did not sell gloves, and she wondered what to do about her hands; she picked out a pair of striped socks that would have to do.

On her way the the checkout, she added a litre bottle of water to her shopping cart. It was important to stay hydrated. Having paid, and dashed back to the car, she unscrewed the bottle and took four of the painkillers, then applied the gel to her face and hands. It seemed to help.

She unfolded the road map and checked the notepad where she'd worked out her route the day before. It was a nuisance not to have her phone, but it might be tracked. Karen wasn't sure if anyone was looking for her. Even her relatives couldn't have called the police yet. Not when she'd only left the day before. And with or without the wig, she no longer looked much like any of her old photos. No, she was safe from interference, as long as she did nothing to attract attention. But this staying out of the sunlight was going to be a nuisance.

She was going to have to start travelling after dark, she told herself as she pulled out onto the highway; only she'd already been driving since the night before. She remembered from last summer's trip -- and what a mundane thing to recall from _that_ trip -- that the little motels, the ones that didn't make you give a credit card number, could be idiosyncratic about their check-in times or turn you away if they felt like it; except for the grotty little motels that turned no one away.

In any case, the local landscape contained neither type. Karen began to think her best bet was to find the kind of turn-off where the local kids went to drink or park, and then hope they all had summer jobs that kept them busy during the day. A gravel road that wasn't on her map, and that claimed to lead to a Christmas tree farm, seemed to suit her purpose. Checking she had enough gas in the tank for later, she pulled off her wig, climbed in the back, and, disinterring a crocheted afghan from the car detritus, she pulled the acrylic waves over herself, and dreamt of her family.

* * *

 

She woke confusedly at sundown with a coppery taste in her mouth, but feeling better. In half-light, the landscape appeared, if not romantic, at least less shabby.

Karen yawned, rechecked the map, and started up the motor. She edged the car around on the gravel until she had turned it fully around, and returned to the main road. It was getting dull with no one to talk to but herself; on that account alone, she was anxious to reach Laura. Of course, that assumed Laura still talked.

She _had_ talked, once upon a time, when a topic interested her sufficiently. Karen and her parents had only rarely visited her father's side of the family, but while the adults exchanged awkward social niceties, she and her cousin used to slip away together to look at Laura’s bead collection, or to go through the family photo albums looking for the empty pages.

Even as children, they both knew there was some terrible secret about the grandmother they had never known, and they supposed the empty photo corners must have been where her photos had been pulled out.

"How did she die?" Karen had whispered on one visit, hoping for something gruesome.

"I don't know if she did, or if she ran away."

"You can't run away if you're a lady. You just pack your things and leave."

"Well, she didn't pack her things, because I heard Mom talking once about getting rid of them."

The idea that her grandmother might not be dead, might be roaming elsewhere, was shiveringly exciting to Karen; from then on, when she lay awake in her bed imagining, she crafted daring, violent adventures for Grandma: booking passage on cruise ships and burgling the cabins of the wealthier passengers; robbing museums and galleries of their art treasures; kidnapping other old ladies' dogs. She was nearly sixteen when her mother told her Grandma had jumped from a cliff seven years before Karen was born.


	2. Chapter 2

Briarwood lay ahead five miles, a blank space in Karen’s mind; she hadn’t the least idea how she was going to rescue Laura from the place, except that as it was a private nursing home, mostly for elderly dementia patients, the security measures were likely designed to keep the residents from wandering off, rather than stop a focused individual from busting somebody out.  
  
Parked outside near the edge of the lot and out of direct view of the entrance, Karen got out the makeup kit. Enough cover-up and she might look like the average visiting family member. Her glasses hid her changing eyes well enough, though the prescription was no longer correct. The wig, she reflected, was much more cooperative than her real hair had ever been. She wondered if people could tell it was fake, but then, a woman might go out in a wig for any number of reasons.

It was warm in the lobby – too warm – and it smelled of mashed potatoes. A polydactyl cat lounged on the arm of an otherwise empty sofa. He opened his eyes, glanced sleepily at Karen, then stretched himself and jumped down to the floor.  
  
The poly cat strolled towards her, tail erect, and sniffed at her ankles. A woman came out of a back office and greeted her.

The orderly chattered kindly as she led Karen to the elevator:

“4-2-3 star, that's the code for the elevator and the exits when you leave. Have you visited your cousin here before? Only she's non-verbal, you know, and her skin condition -- well, we do our best for her. I wouldn't want you to think she's being neglected." She opened a door at the end of a hall. "She's got her own room," she said, adding rather pointedly, "her dreams were disturbing the other residents, poor loves."

  
Karen followed her into the curtained room where her cousin sat on a twin-sized bed. Laura had had dark curls the last time Karen had seen her; now her bald head was like a china doll's without the syrupy sweetness. Her aquiline features were like a bird's, like an oxyrhinchus fish's. A spray of dry scales crossed her left cheekbone and down the side of her long pale neck, disappearing under the big gray cardigan in which she was wrapped. Below the woollen garment, a polyester nightie in sea foam green descended to her ankles. It was invalid's clothing, for a much older woman than Laura. Her grey eyes were fixed uncomplainingly on the wall opposite the window.

  
“There now,” the attendant said brightly.”Here’s your cousin to visit you. Isn’t that worth coming out of your shell for?”

When the attendant had left, Karen sat down in the naugahyde and steel tubing chair next to the bed, and spoke in a low voice:

  
"It's me, Laura — Karen.” Laura continued to gaze at the wall. Karen continued: "I've found out some things about our family tree. I think you and I, we --" She hesitated, then dropped to an even lower volume: " _Iä! Iä!_ ”she began the chant.

Laura remained motionless and silent.

Karen snorted, suddenly, and removed her wig. "I'm like you, Laura. Look."

Laura’s eyes flickered very slightly, she seemed to gather her strength, and found a voice that plainly had not been used in some time:

  
"Cousin." The gull-like voice gave way to a spasm of coughing. Karen drew a tissue from the box on the bedside dresser and handed it to her. "So faa--- so far inland," Laura gasped, at last.

  
"I'm getting you out. We're heading for the coast, if you're up for it." Karen's mind had begun shaping a plan when she'd had to wait at the front desk. "Can you walk?" Her cousin nodded, and drew another drowning breath:

  
"The pills they give me make me dizzy, but my legs still work, and there's a cane I can use." She glanced indicatively towards a corner by the door.

Now that she knew Laura was aware of everything, Karen began to quiz her on the home's schedule.

  
"I have to head out so they'll see me leave," she decided at last, "but I can slip back in. We'd better wait until after bedtime to make an escape, that way they won't notice you're gone for a few hours."

With her wig back on, Karen returned to the lobby. The polydactyl cat was perched on the back of one of the couches, and she spent some time scratching him under the chin. Then she got out one of the sock/mittens she still had balled up in her pockets, and dangled it for him to attack. After the cat had batted at the sock a few times, Karen left it hanging temptingly over the shade of a table lamp -- first wedging a stack of pamphlets under the lamp's base. It might not work, but it couldn't help to prime the pump. She walked into the reception desk's line of site, waved as she exited, then stepped to one side of the doors and waited.

Karen couldn't hear the crash through the glass doors, but she saw the startled cat flee past the desk, and the concierge getting up and heading towards the back of the lobby to investigate. She slipped back in and made for the elevator -- risky, but she couldn't be sure the locks on the stairwell doors had the same key code.

She didn’t know how long it took her to make it back to Laura’s room, staying out of sight of the attendants. Once an old woman grinned slyly in her direction, but said nothing, as Karen ducked behind a cart of laundry. Patients were being taken downstairs for dinner by the time she reached Laura’s hallway, but the nurses had not yet reached that section of the floor, and she entered with her finger to her lips and made for the closet a good minute before someone came with a chair to wheel her cousin to mealtime.

Waiting in a closet for supper time to end was probably, Karen thought, even slightly more boring than going to the cafeteria and waiting for supper to end. Then she reminded herself that at least she was unwatched, and that no one was trying to talk to her or bring her “out of her shell” as the attendant had put it. She opened the closet door a crack; her eyes were fine in the dark, but she wanted another look around the room. It was pleasant enough as institutions go. A print of a lighthouse hung on the wall and she smiled thinly and recalled a song she’d liked as a high-school nerd:

  
_There’s a picture opposite me  
Of my primitive ancestry_

  
Laura could hardly have requested the picture if the staff considered her non-verbal. Was it a mere coincidence, or had someone, more observant than the rest, seen her expression change at the sight of the seascape and hung it where she could look at it?

  
The squeak of wheels outside warned her to shut the door and retreat. Presently she heard the rustle and chatter of someone undressing her cousin and putting her to bed. There was a faint smell of calamine lotion; Karen guessed the attendant was trying to sooth Laura’s “skin condition.”

  
_Forgive them, Father Dagon, for they know not what they do_ , she thought, and wondered if she was blaspheming.


	3. Chapter 3

The lights went down in the room outside the closet, and the noises ceased, except for Laura’s raspy breathing. Nevertheless Karen counted to twenty before she risked opening the door and whispering to her cousin:

  
“I’m going to check the hall. Get dressed and pack anything you want to take along.”

  
“I’ll just get dressed.”

The attendant had left the door half-open; Briarwood policy, no doubt. Karen could still hear staff moving about, and she wondered how long it would take before they dwindled to an overnight crew. She still wasn’t exactly sure how she and Laura were going to leave the building. She didn’t want to risk the front entrance again, and Laura had said there were alarms on the back door and fire exits; other patients sometimes wandered and she’d heard them go off.

Karen was beginning to abandon the idea of a subtle approach.

She peered around the corner and glanced up and down the hallway. Through a window at one end, she could see the moon, almond-shaped like a great eye. Waxing, that was the term. She tried to remember her general science form middle school. On the coast, the tide would be rising, wouldn’t it?

Something else caught Karen’s eye in the dark hallway — she blessed her new ability to see in such low light, as a wild idea came to her.

“Laura — what’s the plan around here if there’s a fire? The staff must have done drills, right?” Her cousin’s eyes reflected the light from the hallway as she thought about the question.

  
“They...test the alarm pretty often — but it’s been a while since they practiced. Evacuate the patients who can walk first, then the chairs.”

  
“They wheeled _you_ earlier. That means you’d be in the second group, even though you can walk with a cane?” Laura nodded. “So pulling the alarm might function as a distraction, if no one’s coming to get you right away.”

  
“But they’ll be —“ Laura coughed. “— be milling around the lobby, and in the stairwells.”

  
“That’s why we’d be climbing out the window at the end of the hall. If I can break it, and unroll the fire hose, without being caught.”

For the first time since her arrival, Karen saw Laura smile. Her teeth were small and pointed, with a pearly sheen.

“If you can manage the hose, I can handle the glass.”

Ten minutes later, after a successful scouting mission by Karen to check that the hose was secured by something she could break with the wire cutters in her purse, she and Laura were exchanging last instructions:

  
“I pull the alarm, we wait in case anyone comes by looking for the fire. Once they’re busy moving the other patients, we move.” She hugged her cousin, and Laura gave her a quick kiss on the cheek before picking up her cane with a determined expression.

  
“I’ve never tried this on a large scale,” she admitted. “Only in the cafeteria when I’m bored, or when they wheel me out to the garden in summer and the bugs are bothersome.”

  
“But you’re sure you can do it?”

  
“With Mother Hydra’s help.” She made the Sign, and Karen returned it, before leaving the room, walking halfway down the hall and pulling the fire alarm.

The bells were instant and piercing. Karen ducked behind a large linen hamper, covering her ears, as figures hurried past the hallway entrance. A nurse switched on the hall light and strode past Karen’s hiding place. She looked in each door. Karen saw her lips move but could make out few words over the noise of the alarm, until she stopped at Laura’s doorway.

  
“Keep calm, dear, and shelter in place. Someone will come get you shortly.” She rounded the corner and moments later, Laura scuttled out. Her gait had changed, with knees and ankles very loose, as though they were starting to be able to bend in all directions; and she hadn’t been kidding about the pills affecting her balance, but she hung on grimly to her cane and moved with surprising speed. Karen offered her arm but Laura pushed past her to the window. She leaned on the sill and peered at the glass.

Taking the hint, Karen got out her wire-cutters and went to work on the fire hose. She had nearly got it unfastened when, floating over the sound of the alarm bell, a note she could feel rather than hear threatened to split her temples. She dropped the cutters and doubled over, gritting her teeth. Mercifully, the window shattered before they did. Straightening up, she gave a fierce tug on the fire hose and it came loose.

  
“Come on!” She and Laura began feeding the hose out the open window until it stopped unreeling. “You slide down first, Laura, I’ll hold this end to be sure.”

Karen watched her cousin slip away until she touched down on the pavement, more lightly than she could have hoped. Then she climbed over the window frame herself, cursing as remaining shards of glass sliced at her hands and knees. She gripped the hose with bloody hands, hoping the wall mount would hold, and slid for the ground.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (short chapter)

Landing on the asphalt, Karen glanced around wildly, briefly dazed, before spotting her car a short distance away. Laura had already taken her hand in an urgent grip and Karen winced as the cuts stung.

  
“Don’t tell me you don’t remember where we’re parked.” Shaking her head, she began towards the vehicle, praising Cthulhu that as yet none of the staff, focussed on the alarm, appeared to have noticed their broken window or the two figures in the parking lot.

* * *

  
Five minutes later they were out on the highway and so far as Karen could tell, no one was following them.

  
“This calls for escape music,” she began.

  
“First your hands, cousin.” Damn, they were still bleeding.

  
“Can’t stop driving. There’s a first aid kit in the glove compartment.” She kept one hand on the steering wheel and held out the other for Laura to dab with ointment and bandage with strips. Then, less confidently, she took the wheel with her bandaged hand and reached her other across her chest while Laura repeated the treatment. Karen sighed with relief when both were done.

  
“Now, put on some music. Your choice, only make it something good to drive to, that won’t make me sleepy.”

  
Nodding, Laura shuffled through the CDs that lay on the floor of the passenger seat. She selected one, opened the case and seemed struck, almost hypnotized by the shimmer of the the disc’s surface.

  
“The sea,” she murmured. “How long till we see it?”

  
“A night and a day, cousin. Put in the disc.”

* * *

Karen missed being able to check the news and maps, and she really missed the intermittent wake-up call app she’d been using for years when she needed to pull all-nighters; but she thought someone might be able to track her device, if anyone wanted to track her and Laura — and they might. Laura’s disappearance must have been noticed by now. So this all-night drive was going to be done the old-fashioned way: coffee and loud music. One desperate straight dash for the sea, on a wave of painkillers and caffeine-boosted adrenaline.

_Thallata! Thallata!_


	5. Chapter 5

Karen glanced about the supermarket that anchored the half-closed-down shopping plaza where they’d stopped for some bottled water and canned goods. Aesthetically, the place was not calculated to appeal to any shopper who had somewhere else to go. Even through her sunglasses, she could tell the walls were painted a darker colour than usual for a supermarket, and a constellation of holes on one wall suggested an interior sign or lighting display had once hung there.

It suddenly struck Karen that the space must have been a discotheque or roller rink back in the ‘70s. All they’d really done was set up some shelving and cash registers and take down the spotlights. Someone in the DJ booth broke in over the music to mention that saltine crackers were on special. Karen wondered if the older shoppers that passed her had come here on the weekends in their youth. For a moment she felt sorry for the denizens of this dying town. If they had been fisher-folk, she could have offered them the love of Father Dagon; but she wasn’t even sure what the local industry had been, just that it had left long ago.

Crossing the parking lot with her plastic bag, the sign on a pole, advertising the “HMS Bounty Lounge,” once more caught Karen’s eye. In truth it had been the reason she’d pulled into the unprepossessing plaza. The lounge in question looked to be from an earlier era than the disco palace supermarket across the lot, and had somehow survived longer in its original form, perhaps because it sold alcohol.

She couldn’t see in the shuttered windows, but the porthole set into the door, and the plaster moai head beside it, implied that the nautical and South-Pacific themes suggested on the sign would be continued within.  

“Can we stop for a drink?” Laura asked, when Karen returned to the car. “A _drink_ drink, I mean. You know I was never a lush, or anything, but I spent years in that nursing home hearing everyone else grumble about not being allowed so much as a beer, and now I’m out I feel I ought to celebrate by drinking something. Not beer, though. And anyway, the painkillers aren’t helping much; maybe alcohol would.”

Karen could think of so many reasons to say no, and yet she wanted a break from driving. No missing-person alerts had come over the radio, during their periodic breaks from CD to check the local news. As long as she stuck to soft drinks, they could spare an hour. Perhaps the bar could even serve her a coffee.

* * *

 

The interior of the HMS Bounty Lounge more than lived up to its promise; it was a phantasmagoria of things made from seashells, things covered in seashells, ship’s bric-a-brac, flotsam, jetsam, fake palm trees, and fake Polynesian art, mostly wooden masks of larger-than-human size. There was something glowing in the centre of the room – possibly a model volcano.She’d have loved this place if she’d seen it as a kid; now it just seemed like a parody, but somethiing had drawn them in. Maybe irony, maybe just thirst.

The dim lighting hid their fishbelly pallor from the waitress, a dishwater-blonde woman dressed in a black shirt and trousers with a black half-apron. Evidently the HMS Bounty Lounge’s Polynesian theme did not extend to the staff uniforms. There were no other customers, and mercifully, no tv screens. Karen sipped her water cautiously -- she was the designated driver, and soft drinks and juices now were all too sweet for her to bear. Laura was goggling at a drinks menu that included Tahitian Pearl Divers, Hurricanes, and Scorpion Bowls. Karen wondered if she should let her drink on top of her meds, but after all her cousin had been through, she couldn’t deny her this pleasure. Besides, she suspected Laura’s Deep One physiology, more advanced than hers, was more resistant to human intoxicants.

The food menu was pretty standard bar food: there were chicken wings in various types of sauce, “English Fish’n’Chips,” fish tacos, and caesar salad. Karen ordered two fish tacos for the table, and a hurricane for Laura, unsure if her cousin was up to speaking.

To her surprise the fish tacos proved pretty good. The HMS Bounty Lounge’s décor might have seen better days, but at least someone in the kitchen was awake. Laura ate only the fried fish and left the rest, but seemed to enjoy her rum cocktail; she paused occasionally to play with the little paper umbrella she’d removed from the pineapple wedge on the rim. Eventually she tucked it into one side of her headscarf. Karen smiled; then she noticed the waitress scowling at Laura and whispering to the man behind the bar. Her stomach clenched until she saw the woman gesture to her head. The waitress couldn’t really think Laura’s scarf was a hijab, could he? Not when the woman wearing it was downing a rum cocktail.

At that moment the waitress’s gaze met Karen’s. She’d the grace to look embarrassed; but yielding to a merciless impulse, Karen pointed to the oblivious Laura and mouthed a word. It was the simplest, one-word explanation for why a young woman might have a scarf tied around her head that didn’t involve religion and it pretty much guaranteed sympathy. It worked; the waitress’s expression abruptly shifted to embarrassed pity. _Humans. They make such a deal over such little things._  

“Your sister –”

“Cousin.”

“How long has she – I mean, I hope she’ll recover, but I guess if you’re on a family road trip together you’re doing her bucket list?”

Karen pondered how to respond. A long conversation could get dangerous, especially if she’d had relatives with cancer and wanted to compare symptoms, but she didn’t want to lose the waitress’s sympathy again. She shrugged.

“Well, she’s responded well to the first round of chemo, but you never know, so why waste time?”

“That is so true, honey. You’ve got to appreciate what you have while you have it.”

“Really, though, we’re hoping this trip will be a celebration of survival.”

The waitress looked as though she wanted to say more words of sympathy and encouragement, but just then two police officers entered, waving at her cheerily.

“Afternoon, Jessie,” said the one with the moustache. _Mother Hydra, was this the only restaurant in town?_ Then again, maybe it was.   The cops took a booth on the opposite side of the volcano, but the place was quiet enough to easily hear every word they spoke.

“Just the lunch menu, Jess, we’re still on-duty.” Karen wondered if they’d got a look at her and Laura. There had been no particular reason to glance in their direction, but they were the only other customers in the room.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (In Which a Plan Fails to Come Together)

The cops, evidently regular customers, had merely glanced at the menu before ordering. They were now munching on fried calamari rings; one was chatting to the other between bites. Though his tone was casual, Karen couldn’t make out the topic.

Pretending to be very interested in a nearby lamp with a conch shell for a base, she whispered to her cousin:

  
“They’re bound to notice us. Briarwood must have reported our breakout by now.”

  
“Karen.”

  
“I wonder how fast I can get the check.” _Or would that just draw more attention?_ Karen fought rising panic. Laura was peering at the menu.

  
“Karen,” she asked, “can I get one of those flaming cocktails?” She pointed a thin, sharp-nailed finger at the “Mini Scorpion Bowl.”

  
“Laura, now’s not the time. We need to get out of here, or create some kind of distrac – oh.” Karen smiled at her cousin, who grinned back, pallid mouth reddened with fruit-juice and food colouring.

 

* * *

 

“That’s where I’m saying the movie was unrealistic.” Officer Brandon jabbed his finger in the direction of the plate of calamari that his partner, Officer Nero was eating, as if the fried molluscs had something to do with his topic. They did not. “A rat-trap building like that wouldn’t have had a working smoke detector, never mind a sprinkler system.”

  
“It was a great scene, though.”

  
“No, pulled me right out of the story. Some of those calamari rings are mine, you know.”

  
“Well, stop yakking and eat them before they get cold,” said Nero, with a mouth full of seafood.

The fire alarm went off.

Over Nero’s shoulder, Brandon could see that a drink at the table on the other side of the restaurant had become a pillar of flame that was currently licking the ceiling, and melting the nylon fishing nets suspended thereby.

“Speak of the devil,” he said, adding, after a moment: “No sprinkler system.”

  
“We’re not the fire inspectors,” said Nero, dropping a calamari ring as he scrambled to his feet. Picking up the finger bowl from the table, he strode across the room and inverted it over Laura’s drink, snuffing out the flames. Brandon came up behind him, glancing back and forth at the two women.

  
“Are you all right? You look pale,” he shouted over the fire alarm, which was still going off. The one in the kerchief opened her mouth and at that moment, the windows and glassware shattered around them. The waitress, who’d come out with a fire extinguisher, shrieked.

  
“Need to evacuate the building,” said Nero. “How many in the kitchen, Jessie?”

  
“Just Bevis at the moment.”

  
“No one else?”

  
“Only us.”

  
“Dan!” Nero bellowed to the bartender. “Go out the back way with Bevis, we’ll meet you in the parking lot!”

  
“Do you need assistance?” Brandon asked Laura.

_The fire-alarm/window-breaking gag wasn’t going to work as well here as it had at Briarwood_ , Karen thought. _Not in daylight and a smaller crowd._ She cursed silently, wishing they’d just taken their chances, paid the bill and left. These cops could have kept right on chowing down.

Outdoors was still painfully bright; as she put on her sunglasses, she became aware Laura was playing up to the younger cop and to the waitress, Jessie, covering her ears with her hands and whimpering.

”Put on your shades, Lor,” she murmured. 

  
“Do you need 911?” Jessie asked them.

  
“No!” Karen exclaimed; she worried that it had come out sounding too nervous, and repeated in a gentler tone: “No, I don’t think that’ll be necessary. Really, we should just be getting back on the road.” She fumbled in her purse for cash. “Keep the change — you can ring us up once it’s ok to go back in.” Perhaps they could get clear of this after all. But the waitress continued to fuss:

  
“Oh, this one’s on the house, honey. I hope your cousin gets better.”

  
“Thanks.” Brazening it out, Karen turned to the cops, but adopted a politely uncertain air: “Do you need us to stick around?” She decided not to use the phrase _or are we free to go?_ No sense planting ideas in the officers’ minds.

  
“Just let us call this in,” said the younger one, with a glance at his partner, who was already on the radio. “We’ve got lots of witnesses, so we probably won’t end up needing you, if your sister’s not feeling well.”

Karen nodded and looked towards the other cop, the one who’d put out Laura’s drink. She suspected he’d be trickier to get around.

**Author's Note:**

> Place-names pulled from a map; inaccuracies no doubt abound.


End file.
